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Provide parents and caregivers with the important new information now available about how to promote the healthy development of children. Recent research into the factors that influence the development of children in their first years of life provide opportunities for parents and caregivers to make choices about how they will parent their children.
Focus attention on meeting the needs of babies and toddlers. Childcare that takes account of the child’s emotional, intellectual, social and physical needs is critical in facilitating healthy attachment in the first three years of life. Research is now available that helps explain how the growing child’s brain develops and organises itself in response to the experiences it is exposed to in the first three to four years of life.
Encourage policy makers, childcare workers, employers and professionals to learn about the significance of early brain development and attachment in relation to the well-being of children. The responsibility for how our children develop rests with individual parents, caregivers, the wider family, the community and society.
Dispel the unhelpful myths embedded in the parenting stories that influence the way many children are raised.
Develop and implement early intervention and support programmes that are based on new child development knowledge and understandings.
We have drawn on our collective backgrounds in teaching, counselling, psychology and social work to create a resource, which we hope will complement the growing body of research and programme development so essential to breaking the cycle of abuse, and neglect many children are exposed to.
Our aim is to strengthen and promote the healthy development of young children in New Zealand.
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